literascribe

Tuesday, 21 August 2018

This is one of those catch-up posts as it dawns on me how long it is since I last blogged! And why is that, you ask? The spring and summer were intense phases of teaching, along with my core editorial work. I realised yesterday that we are on the cusp of autumn and couldn't quite believe it. This post, then, is a photographic diary of my summer and of the amazing people I've met.

I taught a part-time course on getting started in writing from April onwards as part of the University of Oxford's Department of Continuing Education work.

Along the way, I met, as I always do, writers who were starting out or more advanced, writers brimful of enthusiasm, motivation, curiosity and the desire to improve their craft. I read and gave feedback on writing that was poignant, dramatic, thoughtful, beautiful, gripping.

Thursday, 1 March 2018

My guest today is Jane Davis, who has written an absolutely fascinating range of novels. I do love this, that she doesn't keep stirring the pot and serving up the same old same old: every book has an extraordinary cover and an extraordinary, individual tale to tell. Her latest is no exception: Smash allthe Windows tells you by its title that it is about rage and rebellion against injustice. I'm always fascinated by the triggers for story and how stories take hold of us until we simply must tell them. Here's Jane's account of how this latest novel came into being for her –

Write
about how Smash all the Windows came
into being? It sounds so simple.

The seed
of my novel was anger. I remember that quite clearly. I was appalled by the
press’s reaction to the outcome of the second Hillsborough inquest. Microphones
were thrust at family members as they emerged stunned and blinking from the
courtroom. It was put to them that, now that the original ruling had been
overturned, they could get on with their lives. What lives? Were these the
lives that the families enjoyed before the tragedy? Or the lives that they
might have been entitled to expect?

For
those who don’t know about the Hillsborough disaster, a crowd-crush occurred during
the 1989 FA Cup semi-final, killing 96 fans. What was particularly shocking was
how the disaster played out in real-time in living rooms across the country. Live
commentary informed television viewers that Liverpool fans were to blame. In
that moment, victims became scapegoats. It would be twenty-seven years before
the record was set straight.

Elizabeth
Strout, an author I greatly admire, tells her writing students, ‘You can’t
write fiction and be careful.’ And I agree. I really do. But none of us exist
in a vacuum. The pain I saw on the faces of family members in the aftermath of
the second inquest, twenty-seven years after the disaster, was raw. My
favourite description of fiction is ‘made-up truth’. And so combining two of my
fears – travelling in rush hour by Tube, and escalators – I created a fictional
disaster.

The
previous year, on my way to a book-reading in Covent Garden, I’d suffered a
fall. Already overloaded from a day’s work in the city, I also had a suitcase
full of books in tow. The escalator I would normally have used was out of
order. Instead we were diverted to one that was obviously much steeper, but I
was totally unprepared for how fast it was. When I pushed my suitcase in front
of me, it literally dragged me off-balance. Fortunately, there was no one
directly in front. A few bruises and a pair of laddered lights aside, I escaped
unscathed. But the day could have ended very differently.

My
fictional disaster shared many common elements with Hillsborough. Because both
incidents happened before the explosion of the internet, voices weren’t heard
as they would be today. Photographs weren’t posted on Twitter. In both
instances, someone in management was new to the job. There were elements of
institutionalised complacency. (‘We’ve always done things that way’ is still
the most dangerous sentence in the English language.) Facilities dated from a
time when the relationship between pedestrian traffic-flow and human space
requirements wasn’t understood. Risk assessments hadn’t considered how multiple
casualties might be dealt with. Both disasters blighted the lives of many
hundreds – survivors, witnesses, families and friends, and the police, doctors
and nurses who dealt with the aftermath. I also wanted to reflect the
extraordinary pressure endured by the Hillsborough families following their
appalling treatment as they searched for loved ones.

But,
writing about my fictional incident, new difficulties soon presented
themselves. And they came from far closer to home. In May 2017 came the London
Bridge attack, an incident that took place within the setting of my novel. I
witnessed first-hand the bouquets of red roses that spanned the full width of
the bridge. The messages written to loved ones. And the photographs of the
victims, all those devastating, beautiful obituaries.

Susan
Sontag said, ‘Every fictional plot contains hints and traces of the stories it
has excluded or resisted in order to assume its present shape.’ I had to make
conscious decisions if I should let this disaster shape the story I was
writing.

I had
already realised that I didn’t want to write a book about blame. This would do an
injustice to the many individuals who behave heroically in the most terrible
circumstances. Added to which, everything I read about accident investigation delivered
a clear message. Any finding that an individual is to blame is not only likely
be biased, but will fail to get to the root of how the disaster happened.
Corporate Manslaughter remains an option, but there are difficulties and
dangers holding companies and organisations to account. Unwittingly, in setting
my disaster in a London Underground station, I picked a prime example of an
organisation that is subjected to crippling external pressures. London’s
rapidly growing population is the most obvious. Add to this the inherent
difficulties of expanding the Tube network. And nowhere are these challenges
more concentrated than in the City. I certainly didn’t hold London Underground
to be responsible for my fictional disaster.

Then in
June 2017 came the Grenfell Fire, the most heart-breaking tragedy of recent
years, not only because of the scale of the devastation, but because facts
quickly emerged that suggested it could have been prevented. Inadvertently, in
avoiding writing about Hillsborough, I now appeared to be commentating on two
disasters, both of which were far closer to home! And having made a decision to
write about unblame rather than blame, I was seriously out of tune with public
opinion.

Fortunately
the focus of my novel is human drama. My challenge was translate the emotional
fallout onto the page, capturing all of the guarded memories, the hidden sorrow
of a man whose wife will no longer leave the house, the man who mourns not only
the loss of a daughter but his unborn grandson and the end of his family line,
a woman who beats herself up for having been a bad mother, the daughter who
must assume position as head of the household, the sculptor who turns his grief
into art, the sheer heroism involved in getting up day after day and going out
into a world that has betrayed you. The real story is about human resilience
and the healing power of art. It is a story with a beating heart.

Smash all the Windows:

It has taken conviction to right the wrongs.

It will take courage to learn how to live again.

For the families of the victims of the St Botolph and Old Billingsgate
disaster, the undoing of a miscarriage of justice should be a cause for
rejoicing. For more than thirteen years, the search for truth has eaten up
everything. Marriages, families, health, careers and finances.

Finally, the coroner has ruled that the crowd did not contribute to
their own deaths. Finally, now that lies have been unravelled and hypocrisies
exposed, they can all get back to their lives.

If only it were that simple.

Tapping into the issues of the day, Davis delivers a compelling testament to the human condition and the healing
power of art.

Written with immediacy, style and an overwhelming sense of empathy, Smash
all the Windows will be enjoyed by readers of How to Paint a Dead Man
by Sarah Hall and How to be Both by Ali Smith.

Smash
all the Windows is currently on special offer at only 99p until May 31st. The Universal Link is books2read.com/u/49P21p - choose your vendor and order from there.

About Jane:

Hailed by The
Bookseller as ‘One to Watch’, Jane Davis is the author of eight novels.

Jane spent her
twenties and the first part of her thirties chasing promotions at work, but
when she achieved what she’d set out to do, she discovered that it wasn’t what
she wanted after all. It was then that she turned to writing.

Her debut, Half-truths & White Lies, won the
Daily Mail First Novel Award 2008. Of her subsequent three novels, Compulsion
Reads wrote, ‘Davis is a phenomenal writer, whose ability to create
well-rounded characters that are easy to relate to feels effortless’. Her 2015
novel, An Unknown Woman, was Writing
Magazine’s Self-published Book of the Year 2016 and has been shortlisted for
two further awards.

Jane lives in
Carshalton, Surrey with her Formula 1 obsessed, star-gazing, beer-brewing
partner, surrounded by growing piles of paperbacks, CDs and general chaos. When
she isn’t writing, you may spot her disappearing up a mountain with a camera in
hand. Her favourite description of fiction is ‘made-up truth’.

I, for one, am delighted it's March now! February was not my friend: I'm still ill with a tenacious virus but will be launching my first online course, Get Ready to Write, later in the year. If you're not already on my newsletter list and you want to be among the first to know more about my courses and special offers, then you can sign up here. You'll get a free productivity guide too!

Wednesday, 28 February 2018

You'll know that I have often celebrated the freedom writers have these days to choose between a traditional and an independent route to publication. My guest today is Ann Kelley, who has previously featured on this blog here. I love her writing - her ability to observe the natural world is second to none. She has experienced success as a traditionally published writer, winning the Costa Children's Book of the Year with her novel The Bower Bird, the second in her enchanting and moving trilogy about Gussie, a young girl with a life-threatening illness, who is one of the most 'alive' people you will ever meet in fiction. The first in the series is The Burying Beetle and all are published by Luath Press.Ann has also published an ebook herself, of her novella On a Night of Snow. She went on to publish it last year as a lovely paperback with her own illustrations - and if you're a cat fan, this book should be catnip to you!I've invited her to guest-post, though, because she has a salutary tale to tell of the darker side of the self-publishing industry, where, sadly, there are still sharks cruising to exploit writers. I won't name the firm in question here - but if anyone is seeking to self-publish I strongly advise them to join the Alliance of Independent Authors, because they can provide recommendations of good service providers and warn you off the baddies and incompetents.Here's Ann's experience:

My
novella ON A MOONLIT NIGHT was first published as an Ebook (On a Night of Snow)
a few years ago under a different title. My editor, Jennie Renton, who had
worked on several of my published novels offered to set up the ebook for
me.

But,
I had started to draw, and was given encouragement by my teachers and others to
illustrate my own writing. I remembered the novella, and set to work
producing as many drawings of cats as I could.

ON A
MOONLIT NIGHT is the first book I have published myself, having had over twenty
books published by mainline publishers in the past.

Self-publishing
is an exciting project. I had an excellent, helpful designer - Peter Bennett,
who had worked with me on several other productions. He helped with choosing
the correct paper and card as well as designing the entire book, cover to
cover. And what a cover! That was fun! We couldn’t decide which cat to place on
the front cover, and in the end he presented me with the image of all the
cats I had drawn! I particularly asked for the end pages to be visually
exciting with flaps. Having complete control over the design was wonderful. I
recommend it.

However,
when it came to finding a printer things started to go very wrong. I got quotes
from several local printers but decided on X (London based) as
the price was considerably lower. A mistake!

The
designer sent the pdfs to them and they approved them. I ordered 250 copies. I
was offered a 10% discount if I paid upfront. I took up the offer - second
mistake! March 2017 I paid the discounted price of £1530.

The
printer kept promising that the courier was on his way. We had house sitters to
answer the door if they arrived when we were on holiday in Scotland. The books
failed to arrive, more promises and excuses, no books. By June I had
given up hope. The printer wouldn’t give us the courier’s tracking number. We
failed to reach the courier on one or on the phone.

He
said he would use another printer. I thought X was a
printer, but not so. He was just a middleman, it seems. Again no books.

The
printer promised to pay the full refund if the books didn’t arrive by that
weekend. No books. I phoned and politely said that I felt stupid, duped, that it
was a scam.

And
now, no refund apart from little dribbles of £10 and £20 - adding up to £150.
So I went to the Small Claims Court. What a palaver! Had to send them three
copies of all emails or correspondence between X and myself and pay court
costs. Quite stressful even thinking about it.

We
attended the court just before Christmas. No-one from X attended the court.
The judge went through the details carefully and found for me. She did say
thought that didn’t necessarily mean that I would get my money back. Was X a
limited company? No idea. I was naively expecting them to be honest with me. A
lesson learnt. PAY ON DELIVERY, NOT UPFRONT.

I
eventually went to a more expensive local printer, who delivered the
beautifully printed books for free. I don’t know if I will get my money back. I
don’t want to pay for bailiffs. But I won my case. Have kept all the copies of
emails, just in case…

Ann's book is a delight, in spite of all the travails! If you are interested in it you can email her to receive a buying link (contact me at info@fictionfire.co.uk and I will forward your message). You can also find out more about Ann and her other books, by visiting her website at www.annkelley.co.uk If you'd like to read the original story in ebook form, here's the link.

Finally, though a virus has derailed my plans temporarily, I will be launching my first online course very soon - if you're not already on my newsletter list and you want to be among the first to hear, then you can sign up here. You'll get a free productivity guide too!

Friday, 2 February 2018

With Alison Morton on the left and Anna Belfrage on the right
at the HNS conference in London 2014

Yikes, where did January go? It may have been a long, dark month, but it went in the blink of an eye - probably because I've been working full-tilt on a project. All will be revealed soon and if you want to be the first to know, then join my newsletter list at www.fictionfire.co.ukAfter this post-Christmas break, I'm delighted to welcome Anna Belfrage to Literascribe, to talk about the inspiration for her story, 'The Sharing of a Husband', which appears in Distant Echoes. Her story shows us a husband and wife who love one another but are in an absolutely impossible situation - I'll let Anna explain why:

In 1984, the Swedish Herrey brothers won the Eurovision Song
Contest with a song named ‘Diggiloo, Diggiley’. The Herrey brothers were
somewhat exotic in Sweden: they were practising Mormons. At the time, most
Swedes would equate Mormons with young men in dark suits who would knock on
your door and politely ask for some moments of your time so that they could
introduce you to their faith. Those of us who’d watched How the West was Won (a TV series featuring the Macahan family who
set out due west in the aftermath of the US Civil War that was a HUGE hit in
Sweden) had been presented with a somewhat more sinister version of Mormons:
dark clad men who practised polygamy and enticed young gullible girls into
plural marriages.

Obviously, this was a gross simplification. There was much
more to the Mormons than their take on polygamy.

The Mormon religion saw the light of the day in the early 19th
century. The first prophet, Joseph Smith, purportedly had a vision where an
angel guided him to discover a number of tables in gold, upon which was
inscribed the story of a lost people, the Nephites. This people were the
descendants of one Lehi who, inspired by God, had his extended tribe build
boats and sailed west, away from the land of Israel and to Central America.
Joseph Smith translated the golden plates into what became the Book of Mormon,
so named after the angel that pointed Joseph in the direction of the golden
tables.

At the time, the world was a restless place: in the wake of
the Napoleonic wars, the economy was generally unstable. The future looked
anything but pink and rosy, and more and more people turned to religion to find
some sort of hope. The Awakening was upon us, a period when preachers of all
denominations tried to grow their flocks by promising salvation. The young Joseph
Smith was so confused by all these preachers, all of them insisting their
interpretation of the Christian faith was the right one, that he went into the
forest and prayed, hoping for divine guidance. God delivered, telling Joseph to
seek guidance only in Scripture, not in charlatans.

Simultaneously with all this religious fervour, the world,
and in particular America, saw a number of Utopian movements. These were
movements aimed at building a better, fairer world. People traipsed off into
the wilds to build a brave new world, aspiring to societies built on equality
and freedom.

The religion Joseph Smith presented to the world in the
1830s was to a large extent influenced by Utopian thought. He wanted to build a
brand new way of life in which no one went hungry or homeless. Obviously, this
appealed. And as Joseph Smith was a charismatic and very handsome man, he was
especially appealing to women.

So far, so good, one could have said. Not so. The Mormons
were viewed with scepticism by the established churches, and when Joseph Smith
had the vision that had him urging his Mormon brethren to embrace polygamy, he
indirectly handed his enemies a loaded gun with which to shoot him. At the
time, polygamy was not expressly forbidden by American law, but it was
definitely frowned upon. Persecution of Mormons increased, Joseph Smith was
arrested and murdered in his prison cell, and the new leader of the Mormons,
Brigham Young, saw no choice but to lead his people even further west, all the
way to present day Utah where the tenacious Mormons would carve out a garden in
the desert and establish a new city, Salt Lake City.

Brigham Young was a firm believer in polygamy and considered
it to be the duty of every Mormon man to take multiple wives and of every
Mormon woman to accept having sister wives. But surely it can’t have been that
easy, can it? Jealousy between wives must have caused strife and disharmony,
and many men would probably have preferred having only one wife—because they
loved the one they had.

I’ve been fortunate enough to visit Salt Lake City on
several occasions. I count many LDS-members (Church of Latter Day Saints is the
official name for the religion founded by Joseph Smith) among my friends. And
when I ask them what they think of polygamy (which, BTW, is no longer permitted
by the Church of Latter Day Saints, hasn’t been since the late 19th
century) and what might have driven Joseph Smith to promote it, I get varied
answers. No one questions the validity of Joseph’s vision – as the First
Prophet, he may not be flawless in the eyes of present-day Mormons, but criticising
him is not really on. However, both men and women talk about the sacrifice a
plural marriage required: from the man, who had to distribute his time fairly
among his wives, from the women, obliged to share their husband.

One of my Salt Lake City friends lent me a biography of one
of his ancestors, one of the founding members of the LDS church. This man would
end up with three wives, but it was his first wife whom he truly loved, thereby
afflicted by guilt because he couldn’t quite summon the same feelings for his
other two wives. In his case, he set up separate homes for his wives and spent
his life ambulating from one home to the other, fathering close to twenty-four
children. He was extremely proud of all his children, and he did his best to be
a devoted husband to all his wives – but he only called one of them “my love”.

All of this inspired my short story, The Sharing of a Husband, the story of a young couple in Deseret.
The husband is under severe pressure by the elders of the church to take more
wives, but his present wife won’t hear of it. But poor Ellie is one lonely
voice and Joshua ultimately caves, betraying Ellie to comply with the
requirements of his church. Not, I imagine, an easy situation to resolve.

Thank you, Anna!

A

bout Anna Belfrage: Anna is a financial professional with two absorbing interests - history and writing. She has authored the acclaimed time-slip series The Graham Saga, winner of multiple awards including the HNS Indie Award 2015. Her ongoing series is set in the 1320s and features Adam de Guirande, his wife Kit, and their adventures during Roger Mortimer's rise to power. The latest Graham saga novel is There is Always a Tomorrow - her loyal fans are, no doubt, already looking forward to the next! Anyone who knows Anna finds it impossible to understand just how she manages to be so incredibly productive - but then, she has an ultra-dynamic imagination that never seems to switch off! Anna frequently guests on history blogs and her website is at http://www.annabelfrage.com/, her blog is at https://annabelfrage.wordpress.com/ and you can find her on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/annabelfrageauthor/

Distant Echoes is published by Corazon Books in ebook and paperback and is available here . This anthology contains winners and runners-up of the past two Historical Novel Society’s short story competitions.

I have also written about Distant Echoes and the small lives on the fringes of great events of history on the Historical Novel Society’s website here.Previous guest-posts from contributors are here, here and here.

Are you a writer - or do you want to be? Visit my website to download your free guide to living a productive writing life and be the first to hear about my new online courses launching in February!

Sunday, 31 December 2017

Well, 2017 was a crazy ride wasn’t it? As we stand on the
threshold of 2018 I’m hearing my friends

At the Society of Authors/Writers in Oxfordparty at Balliol College

on Facebook wishing one another better times in 2018, not just on a personal level but a global one. We seem to have
spent the past twelve months reeling from one shock to another or feeling
threatened by dark possibilities to come.

But the solstice has passed. Days are still dark but we
are turning towards the sun. Now is the time of beginnings, of new edifices
built on old foundations.

When I look back on my 2017 it is full of dark and light.
The first quarter was one of physical disability and a sense that my horizons were
closing in because I simply could not walk without serious pain. The knee
injury of the autumn allied itself with the weakness in my hip. I couldn’t get
up and down the stairs without a stick. I couldn’t get out of chairs without the stick. I felt about 105 years
old – and I believed this was going to be my future. You can imagine how
depressing that was.

Now, at the end of the year, things are very different.
To my undying surprise, I find myself an active gym member. I do resistance
training. My muscles are more toned and I’ve lost over half a stone. I have
more energy. I go up and down the stairs and up from chairs without a stick.
Yay! There is a lot more progress to make but I feel Olympian compared to how I
was a few months back.

What is the lesson from this? That your body matters – it’s
the vehicle of all your creativity and when it is unwell it is hard to be
positive or make progress in any other sphere of life.

The other main aspect of my 2017 was the workload. I am glad
to have helped so many students and editorial clients over the past year. It is
extremely fulfilling. But when you realise you’ve edited 1.2 million words
during the year and none of them were your own, you start to wonder when you
will ever match the service you give to others with attention to your own writing
ambitions.

The lesson from this is that the balance of elements in
one’s life needs to be evaluated, constantly, because it is so easy to let one
aspect get out of hand. To that end I will be cutting back on my editing role
and launching a whole new Fictionfire activity in January. Wish me luck!

Highlights of my year were the Oxford summer schools, teaching
at Winchester, holidays in Cornwall and Provence, the publication of ‘Salt’ in Distant Echoes and my poem ‘Cooling’ in Vine Leaves LiteraryJournal. I read quite a few books as
part of my IGISIRI campaign – but not nearly enough, because of those 1.2
million words of clients’ books. My latest IGISIRI is Geraldine Brooks’ Year ofWonders, which I have meant to read for years. It was stunning. I’m
hoping next year to be more consistent in my IGISIRI reading - for previous posts on what IGISIRI means, go here.

I’ll sign off now with my warmest wishes that you all
have a creative, fulfilling 2018 year ahead of you. I’ll be back this week with
news of my new Fictionfire venture and historical novelist Anna Belfrage will
be guest-posting.

Happy New Year!

Lorna x

Are you a writer - or do you want to be? Visit my website to download your free guide to living a productive writing life.

Thursday, 21 December 2017

The latest in my series of guest-posts by writer-contributors to Distant Echoes, a wide-ranging anthology of historical short stories, is by Mari Griffith, who sheds light on a little-known episode at the end of the eighteenth century, when England dreaded the invasion of Napoleon's armies ...

Meghan. It’s a name on people’s lips on both sides of the
Atlantic: and just wait until the fifth in line to the English throne and his
American fiancé are well and truly wed and start producing children! Unimaginative
parents everywhere will be naming their babies after the newest, most glamorous
member of the royal family. That’s what happens. Just think of all the
Victorias, the Alberts and Alices. Now Meghan will be the name of choice and I
wonder how many people will realise that it’s a Welsh name – incorrectly
spelled in this case but at least it’s correctly pronounced and Ms. Markle
won’t end up being known as Princess Mee-gun. That really would make Welsh
toenails curl!

I was particularly amused to read that even the royal corgis
immediately took to Meghan. I wondered whether anyone told her that she was
patting the head of a Welsh dog? The
name derives from the Welsh ‘corach’ meaning ‘dwarf’ and ‘ci’ meaning ‘dog’. And,
while we’re on the subject, spare a thought during this festive season for the Christmas
song we now know as ‘Deck the Halls’ – yes, that too is Welsh. It was a 16th
century carol for New Year’s Eve, or ‘Nos Calan’. Wales is pretty much
everywhere, if you care to look for it.

But back to the name. It’s pure coincidence, of course, that
I had chosen it for my short story ‘For the Love of Megan’ which is included in
the HNS Anthology DistantEchoes. It tells the tale of Jemima
Nicholas, a woman of formidable stature who was the town cobbler in Fishguard on
the coast of West Wales when, in 1797, England was bracing itself against the
threat of a French invasion. Panic-stricken people withdrew their gold from the
banks, forcing the issue of promissory notes – what we now call bank notes –
for the first time ever. And yes, some 1,400 rag, tag and bobtail members of
the Legion Noire did land - not in
England but in West Wales. These undisciplined conscripts plundered farmyards
and ate undercooked chickens washed down with bootleg brandy from a shipwreck. Suffering
from hangovers and food poisoning, they were hardly in any state to defend
themselves against Jemima’s pitchfork as she rounded them up before turning them
in. She wasn’t going to let any nasty ‘Froggies’ ruin the life of her brand new
niece, baby Megan. Jemima then went on to coordinate the women of the town in
forming a convincing ‘defence force’ to intimidate the invaders. A memorial
stone to record her achievements was erected outside the church of St. Mary’s
in Fishguard and still stands to this day.

Jemima’s is just one of many, many Welsh stories which are
totally unknown outside Wales and this has a great influence on my work as a
writer. Belonging, as I do, to a nation with such a rich and diverse history, I
really want to share it with my readers and if either Megan or Meghan can help,
that’s fine by me.

Thank you, Mari!

About Mari Griffith: Mari turned to writing historical fiction in retirement after a working lifetime of producing, promoting and presenting programmes in Welsh and English on BBC Wales. Her first novel, Root of the Tudor Rose became an Amazon bestseller. She followed that with The Witch of Eye, the story behind the most sensational treason trial of the 15th century. Mari's website is here.

Distant Echoes is published by Corazon Books in ebook and paperback and is available here . This anthology contains winners and runners-up of the past two Historical Novel Society’s short story competitions.

I have also written about Distant Echoes and the small lives on the fringes of great events of history on the Historical Novel Society’s website here.Previous guest-posts from contributors are here and here.

Are you a writer - or do you want to be? Visit my website to download your free guide to living a productive writing life.

Wednesday, 13 December 2017

In 1980, I remember my late friend Catherine Reilly having trouble
convincing academics that the anthology she was working on, of women’s poetry
of the First World War, had significance. That anthology, Scars upon my Heart, went on to
great success and was on exam syllabuses for many years. The poems she sourced reminded
readers that the First World War wasn’t all about bully beef and muddy trenches
– it was about the experience of loved ones: the women who wait, who grieve, whose
experience of war is very different from that of their menfolks.

For today’s post I have invited two other contributors to Distant Echoes, a wide-ranging
anthology of historical short stories, to share with me in exploring this topic
– the heartbreak and helplessness of women at times of war in the past.

We’re starting with Richard Buxton, whose powerful story ‘Disunion’
introduces us to an American Civil War situation far removed from what we’re
familiar with when we watch Gone with the Wind. His focus is on the poisonous breakdown of
trust in the community when people take sides:

Richard Buxton

Civil Wars differ from
those between nations inasmuch as the wives and daughters were not only waving
their menfolk goodbye, but trying to survive in the midst of the war
themselves. Disunion is set in
Eastern Tennessee, as several of my stories are. What made it so much tougher
for those left behind was that, collectively, Tennessee voted to leave the
Union and side with the Confederacy, but a majority in Eastern Tennessee wanted
to remain part of the Union. It made this part of America a grim place to spend
the war (1861 – 1865). Scores were still being settled, usually violently, many
decades later.

The other characteristic of a
Civil War is that it’s impossible to remain neutral, which my female narrator comes
to learn in the hardest possible way. Others didn’t need persuading. Ellen
Renshaw House was an ardent Confederate supporter living in Knoxville who
referred to herself as ‘A Very Violent Rebel’. While I couldn’t agree with her
politics, I nevertheless found her voice hugely compelling. While Knoxville was
under Union control she split her time between looking after wounded
Confederates and criticising the military authorities. Her diary entries leave
no doubt as to the extreme bitterness felt on both sides in the city.
Executions were common and Ellen bore witness to many. She was eventually
expelled to Georgia.

There were more than two years of
Confederate control before the Union took over. Conditions were every bit as
harsh, possibly even more so away from the cities where there was no garrison
to keep order. Coves (valleys) in the Appalachians held small scale communities
that were relatively cut-off from the outside world and wanted nothing to do
with the war. Life scratching a living on a one-mule farm was hard enough even
when there was a husband and a wife. That was the story I wanted to tell in Disunion: a woman trying to endure with
her husband gone but with others to care for, while all around her was
suspicion and antipathy.

As the war went on the age range
for conscription widened, particularly in the South, and women lost sons and
fathers to the army as well as their husbands. Irregulars, desperados outside
the sway of the Confederate Army and often made up of deserters, took refuge in
the hills and preyed on the weak and defenceless. The women of Cades Cove were driven to form themselves into home guards to protect
property and livestock, their children acting as pickets and blowing horns when
the raiders were spotted. There was no escaping the war.

Even after the war the suffering went on. It
was a time of great displacement. Families sick of the feuding moved away south
or west and new people displaced from elsewhere arrived. The women waited for
loved ones to return from the war, not knowing if they were alive or dead. Many
would never find out.

Thank you, Richard.

My own story, ‘Salt’ tackles
the familiar subject of women watching their men go off to war. As Richard has
just mentioned, many would never learn what became of their men. That fear hangs
over my main character, Ina, and her sister Mary Bella. What’s more, they are
in an unfamiliar place themselves. They are Scottish herring girls – their job
is to gut, salt and pack the huge quantities of herring caught by fisherman off
Great Yarmouth on the eastern coast of England. For many years this was a
tradition in Scottish fishing communities – men and women would travel round
the coast of Britain, following the shoals of herring. Ina and Mary Bella are
dislocated from what is familiar, the hours are punishing, the work extremely
hard and their lodgings basic. But what they have is the warmth of sisterhood
and friendship – these young women worked in teams with allocated roles and
their efficiency was amazing. That female comradeship counterpoints the male
camaraderie over in France, in the trenches.

I wanted to write a story
that recorded my own heritage (my grandmother was one of those herring ‘quines’)
but as it unfolded it became a tale where emotion was heightened not only by
that sense of being in a ‘foreign’ place but by the speed of events. Mary Bella
meets a man and their shared passion is intensified by its vulnerability. War
stories often lead to scenes of parting – no one knows if or when the loved one
will come back. The final scene of the story carried me along on a surge of
swift writing and the final word fell into place with an almost audible click.

Since then, I’ve wondered
what Ina’s life held for her later – maybe I’ll write about that some day!

Finally, Jasmina Svenne’s story ‘Too Late, Beloved’
jumps us to the end of World War I. Her story and my one act as book-ends,
showing us the anticipatory dread and the poignant aftermath. Will my man come
back, every woman must have asked herself, and if he does, what will he be?
What will he find?

Here’s what Jasmina has to say:

Jasmina Svenne

As a writer of short historical
fiction, I find that one of the hardest tricks to pull off is to evoke another
era in as few words as possible and that the easiest way to do it is to go for a
period the average reader knows, or thinks s/he does. So my other passion – the
late-C18th – tends to be put on the backburner in favour of WWI.

The First World War, I think,
still has resonance because it’s only a few years since the last of the
veterans died and because so many ordinary citizens were caught up in it, in
one way or another, which probably makes it easier for readers to empathise
with characters that could almost be their (great-)grandparents.

For that reason, a lot of WWI stories
tend to concentrate on civilian soldiers – the Pals Battalions and the families
they left behind them. I chose not to do so, because it strikes me that
sometimes professional soldiers like Edgar in my story – one of the Old
Contemptibles who was involved in the Retreat from Mons – tend to be
overlooked, as if their sacrifices are somehow worth less, simply because they
had chosen the army as a career even before war broke out. (Having said that, I
have a sneaky suspicion that, before the war, Victor probably worked in an
office or a bank.)

The original inspiration for ‘Too
Late, Beloved’ was a story told by one of the 100-and-something-year-old
veterans interviewed on a BBC documentary called ‘The Last Tommy’. One of his
comrades had been taken prisoner during the war, but had somehow been missed
off the POW lists, so neither his family nor his sweetheart was informed that
he was still alive. On his return, he went to his sweetheart’s home, only to
find she wasn’t there. Instead her father told him that, presuming he was dead,
she had married someone else. Devastated, the POW emigrated almost immediately
and the young woman’s father never told her that her first love was still
alive.

That story, combined with the
Vivien Leigh film Waterloo Bridge and
contemporary news stories about missing people, made me wonder what it would be
like to live with that uncertainty – unable to grieve, unable to trust the
spark of hope you would inevitably harbour somewhere in the deepest depths of
your heart.

How long would it take before you
cracked under the pressure from well-meaning friends and relatives, to accept
the unacceptable and try to move on with your life? And what if you discovered
you had made the wrong choice – maybe? Because I also believe it is possible to
love two people just as much, but differently and for different reasons.

Thank you, Richard and Jasmina!

Distant Echoes
is published by Corazon Books, in ebook and paperback and is available here . This anthology contains winners and runners-up of the past two Historical
Novel Society’s short story competitions. ‘Salt’ won the HNS Oxford 2014 competition.
Jasmina’s The Beggar at the Gate’ won in 2012 and is published in the ebook The Beggar at the Gate, available here –
my runner-up story ‘Reputation’ appears there too.

I have also written about Distant Echoes and the small lives on
the fringes of great events of history on the Historical Novel Society’s
website here.

Further reading:
Wake, by Anna Hope, a moving novel
about women after the end of the First World War as Britain prepares its
ceremonial funeral for the Unknown Soldier; Testament of Youth by Vera Brittain, which follows that familiar arc from the pre-war
to the post-war experience and which I defy you to read without weeping; The Last FightingTommy by Harry Patch – mentioned by Jasmina. I blogged about Harry
Patch some years back and you can read my post here.

About my guests:

Richard Buxton grew up in
Wales and lives in Sussex. He is a graduate of the Creative Writing Masters
programme at Chichester University. His writing successes include winning the
Exeter Story Prize, the Bedford International Writing Competition and the
Nivalis Short Story Award. His US Civil War novel, Whirligig, which was longlisted for the 2015 HNS award, was
released this spring. www.richardbuxton.net

Jasmina Svenne was born in
Derby to Latvian parents. Her writing career began with a novel, Behind the Mask, winner of the Katie
Fforde Bursary, followed by nine historical novellas. Her stories have also
been published in Journeys Beyond
(Earlyworks Press), Wooing Mr Wickham
(Honno).

Are you a writer - or do you want to be? Visit my website to download your free guide to living a productive writing life.

Distant Echoes

Selected winners and shortlisted stories from recent Historical Novel Society Awards, including my prizewinning story 'Salt'. Ebook and paperback published by Corazon Books

The Chase

Daphne du Maurier meets Joanne Harris in this evocative, compelling story of memory, guilt and loss. 'This is a haunting book ... set in the beautiful Dordogne, where past and present fuse in a page-turning mystery. I could go back to this again and again.' Alison Weir, best-selling novelist and historian. Ebook available on Amazon Kindle and Kobo. Paperback available on Amazon and direct from the online shop on my website http://www.fictionfire.co.uk

The Chase is recommended by Book Muse reviewers

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Visit my website https://www.fictionfire.co.uk/ to find out about my creative writing courses and workshops, along with the help I can offer you - manuscript appraisal, editing, consultancy and mentoring. Sign up via the website to receive my regular Fictionfire newsletter, with articles, tips, links, inspirational quotations and writing exercises.

About Me

I run Fictionfire Literary Consultancy at www.fictionfire.co.uk. I also teach at the University of Winchester's Writers' Festival and on various writing programmes for Oxford University. I've set up Fictionfire Press at www.fictionfirepress.com and have republished my novel, 'The Chase', previously published by Bloomsbury. I'm currently working on a historical novel (the opening of which has just won Words with Jam magazine's First Page competition) and a collection of historical short stories. My stories have won an Ian St James Award, been shortlisted for the Bridport Prize and longlisted for the Fish Short Story Prize. 'Reputation', a finalist in the Historical Novel Society's short story prize 2012, appears in 'The Beggar at the Gate'. My unpublished children's novel 'Hinterland' reached the shortlist of four for Macmillan's Write Now Prize last year. My chapter on Pre-writing appears in 'Studying Creative Writing', in the Creative Writing Series published by The Professional and Higher Partnership. My story 'Salt' won the Historical Novel Society's London 2014 Conference Story Award. Hell for me would be a desert island with no books - in fact anywhere with no books!